1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus that can install and execute an application, a control method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an image forming apparatus, as typified by Multifunctional Embedded Application Platform (MEAP) (trademark of Canon Inc.), has been provided in which an application execution environment is installed, and an application can be installed and executed. Applications that can be installed into the MEAP include an authentication application for performing authentication of the image forming apparatus, in addition to normal applications.
In such an image forming apparatus, a size of a persistent storage area (non-volatile storage area such as a hard disk drive (HDD) and a flash read only memory (ROM)) that can be used by the application is previously determined, and each application uses the persistent storage area within a predetermined range.
In the MEAP, as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-338268, a predetermined management file in each application declares a usage amount of the persistent storage area used by each application. In addition, a mechanism is also discussed in which, the application can be installed only when a total sum of sizes declared by each application does not exceed a range of a maximum usable size predetermined by the image forming apparatus.
On the other hand, as a solution when resources are depleted, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-134871 discusses an information processing apparatus that notifies a user of resource depletion information.
However, under a specific condition, due to an operation difficulty of the application, a case may occur where the application uses the storage area more than the declared amount. For example, when an operation log of the application is accumulated and stored, recording is performed over the upper limit of the log size.
If such a situation is left unsolved, the resource of the image processing apparatus is depleted, and thus the image processing apparatus may not continue the operation normally. As another issue, if a function of performing notification after the resource has been depleted is provided, the image forming apparatus may be already in an unusable state when it is notified, and thus a user's work may be stopped for long hours.
In addition, the following issue is also conceivable. As a type of the application that can be installed into the image forming apparatus, in addition to the normal applications, an authentication application for performing user authentication for allowing a user to use the image forming apparatus is provided.
Since the authentication application is used to protect the entire image forming apparatus, the authentication application needs to be more appropriately operated compared with the normal applications. To prevent the image forming apparatus from being wrongly used, the authentication application needs to be differently operated from the normal applications.
The present invention is directed to provide an image forming apparatus that can solve at least one the issues described above.